Broadband provision - Slow response putting us out of the game

AS THE remnants of Europe’s once great manufacturing industries struggle to remain competitive in the face of unavoidable challenges from low-cost economies we need to know that we have some prospect of sustaining employment for a significant number of people.

We have hitched our wagon to two principal ideas: retraining and creating a knowledge-based economy. Retraining in an age when the defining characteristic is change has become everyday and the very barest minimum needed to stay in the game.

Being part of “knowledge-based economy” has a comforting, zeitgeist appeal; it sounds good but can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. For policy purposes it can be vague, flexible and all-embracing. It is an-easy-to-sell idea, but requires a commitment that presents challenges in cultural, infrastructural and educational provision that we have yet to meet.

It means that we have to have the tools capable of supporting the exchange of data and ideas, images and complicated design documents. We need to have the best broadband available. That we do not have these basic tools was once again underlined at a Construction Industry Federation (CIF) conference yesterday.

It was pointed out that the efforts of developers to avail of the online facilities set up by planning departments was not rewarded because our broadband cannot deliver the data under consideration.

An effort by private and public interests to streamline procedures, to be more competitive, cost effective and efficient is being stymied because our infrastructure can’t cope. Neither the planners nor the developers are able to offer the service they would wish, and both incur extra costs as a consequence. The envelope won’t fit in the postbox; the parcel is too heavy for the pony express.

The CIF concerns are an echo of a European survey across 15 countries published earlier this week which put Irish broadband provision in 12th place.

Late last year Forfás described how the fastest speed available to Irish business is four to five times more expensive than in the rest of Europe. Sweden’s top high-speed connection is four times faster than the fastest in Ireland. It is half the price.

Earlier this week Communications Minister Eamon Ryan announced that he is to publish a discussion document on the roll-out of broadband. The minister also said that 85% of the population have access to broadband, and that there were 793,000 subscribers at the end of the third quarter of last year.

Once again it is difficult to accept that we are addressing an issue that so much of our future depends on with the urgency it needs. Just like energy, food independence, public transport, public sector reform, environmental protection and so many other pressing matters.

We are one of the top three exporters of software in the world. That is a considerable achievement, and unless our broadband provision improves it is unlikely we will maintain that position. In a market where geography has become all but irrelevant it is that important.